Tiokasin’s guests are Chilean-based Indigenous Mapuche artist Kütral Vargas Huaiquimilla and Vassar College Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Dr. Montserrat Madariaga-Caro. They will talk about the art exhibition, “Abolengo: An Illustrious History of Looting in Mapuche Lands” featuring Kütral’s  work. The exhibition opens Thursday, Feb. 22 and is on view through Feb. 29 at The Palmer Gallery at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Kütral’s work interrogates settler narratives and practices – extractivism and overconsumption – that allow colonial continuity in Mapuche lands (the south of Chile and Argentina). Through parody, pastiche and “modding,” or alterations, Kütral intertwines pop culture and critiques of environmental racism and violence against Indigenous people. Dr. Madariaga-Caro’s research focuses on the intersections of Indigenous poetics, aesthetics, and micropolitics of land, life and justice. Her current book project illuminates how the works of Indigenous Mapuche poets and artists invigorate land relations among humans and other ecological bodies and work against settler-colonialism, racial extractive capitalism, and compulsory cis-hetero socializations.

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